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Category Archives: howto
Video Tutorial: editing R plots in Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for creating and editing figures; unfortunately, it’s also really intimidating. So today at The Molecular Ecologist we’re trying something a little different: a screen-capture video tutorial about using Adobe Illustrator to enhance and edit plots … Continue reading
Posted in howto, R
Tagged Adobe, Figures, how to, Illustrator, Plots, R, Screen Capture, Tutorial, Video
3 Comments
On (mis)interpreting STRUCTURE/ADMIXTURE results
STRUCTURE, ADMIXTURE and other similar software are among the most cited programs in modern population genomics. They are algorithms that estimate allele frequencies and admixture proportions under the premise that sampled genotypes are derived from one of “K” ancestral populations, … Continue reading
Making Maps in R, volume 2: ggplots
The open-source statisical programming environment R is truly a Swiss Army knife for molecular ecology. With the right code, R can processes genetic data and trait measurements, analyze how genetic variants relate to traits, reconstruct phylogenetic trees, and illustrate the … Continue reading
10 simple rules for designing a scientific poster
Conference season is upon us! Around the world, thousands of scientists face a daunting task: designing a scientific poster. It should be sleek, yet informative; eye-catching, yet professional; and most of all it should attract the attention of your future … Continue reading
How to make the most out of your phylogenetic study
Phylogenetic studies are crucial for ecology and evolution. However, their usefulness for comparative biology or meta-analyses can vary considerably. Especially the inclusion of unidentified species (“Balanus sp.”) obstructs their use in comparative studies. How can I attach life history or morphological data … Continue reading
Posted in data archiving, evolution, howto, phylogenetics, Uncategorized
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Using R to mine species data
Many of us generate more data than we know what to do with (speaking of which: keep an eye out for the 2016 NGS Field Guide, coming soon!), so it’s easy to forget about the piles of data already at our fingertips. Research potential is … Continue reading
The 2016 Next-Generation Sequencing Field Guide Preview: Zombie Systems and New Hope
After a year of minimal activity, we finally have some significant changes in Next Gen Land. In the 2016 update of the NGS Field Guide, I will continue to give my overall interpretation about the various instruments, but with less … Continue reading
Posted in genomics, howto, methods, RNAseq, transcriptomics
Tagged Illumina, Ion Torrent, NGS Field Guide, PacBio
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Geographical Heat Maps in R
I go crazy for fancy data visualizations in R, and a figure in a recent publication has had me wondering if there is an easy way to incorporate density distributions (or as in their case, a distribution of f4 statistics, … Continue reading
Quick and dirty tree building in R
One of the major obstacles to turning your sequence data into phylogenetic trees is choosing (and learning) a tree-building program. Confounding this problem is the fact that most researchers will want to perform numerous, complementary analyses, each of which may … Continue reading
Posted in howto, methods, phylogenetics, R, software
Tagged ape, distance matrices, maximum likelihood, nucleotide evolution, parsimony, phangorn, phylogenetics, R
3 Comments
2D Posterior Density Plots in R
I have been grappling with visualizing two dimensional histograms of posterior density distributions of parameters, as estimated by one of your favorite programs – IMa2, MIGRATE-n, MSVAR, etc. All these programs print out distributions of estimated parameters, and here’s a … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, howto, population genetics, R, software
Tagged data visualization, genomics, population genetics, R
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